


Would Have, Could Have, Should Have

by thekumquat



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, hope everybody likes in medias res because I'm not coming up with a whole plot for this one scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-26 21:18:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7590787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekumquat/pseuds/thekumquat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you look death in the face, you re-evaluate your life a little.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

April had been close to death before. It never got easier.

“Stay calm,” she said. She tried to keep her voice steady, but the echo that came back to her sounded breathless and shaky all the same. “You can do this. You’ll be okay. In-Internal breathing. Just like Splinter taught you.”

This seemed different. Before, there had been her friends at her back. A chance. A way out. Some glimmer of hope.

The water tank was filling slowly but surely. She’d risen almost to the top of it now, and she was fast running out of room. She had to fight against the numbing cold of the water and the heavy drag of her clothes. She’d managed to kick off her sneakers, but her jeans felt like they were made of lead.

April was alone down here. No one knew where she was. She’d worn her voice out screaming for help before the water had even lifted her off the ground. That was the worst part of this. The time it gave her to think. She wasn’t going to go out in a blaze of glory and a rush of adrenaline. She was going to drown. It was going to be slow. All the time in the world to think.

To think about the things she could have done, should have done, would have done if she had more time.  

Her numb hands pressed against the roof of the tank. She was going to die down here.

_I should have spent more time with Dad. I should have studied harder for school. I should have spent more time with my friends._

_I should have told him-_

There was a crash and splinters of wood showered down around her. A hatch flew back and sudden sunlight blinded her.

All she saw was a flash of green. All she felt was the rush of cold air to her face and strong hands on her arms, pulling her to safety. April still had those thoughts -- would have could have should have -- whirling in her head. She lurched forward and kissed him. He sputtered and choked under her, but she held him close. She’d wanted to do this for so long, and no adorably awkward panicking was going to stop her.

He tasted differently from how she expected. She’d thought there would be wood polish and engine grease, chemicals and cold coffee.  

When she had to break for air she kept her nose pressed to his, her eyes closed as the emotions swamped her.

“I love you, I love you so much, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, I just didn’t know how, and I kept waiting for the right moment but it never came and I just, I didn’t want to die without telling you that I-“

She opened her eyes and saw two big green eyes framed by red.

April jerked backwards out of Raph’s grip.

“Oh. Oh you’re. You’re not. Um.”

Raph’s gaze was fixed blankly in the middle distance, expression frozen and startled like a rabbit in the headlights. Behind him, Leo was staring at her as if she’d grown another head.

“I uh. I kind of thought that um…that Donnie would be, uh…the one who...”

“Donnie and Mikey went to check the water towers on the other side of the compound,” Leo said, awkwardly. “So uh. We were checking these. Uh. Ones.”

Raph slowly closed his mouth and put his hands back down to his sides. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second and the wave of embarrassment and horror that swamped them both sent them spinning away like a physical force.   

“Nggk,” said Raph.  

“Okay. I’m just…gonna get back in the tank and finish drowning.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which April has to deal with the fallout of confessing her love to (and making out with!) the wrong turtle.

“We need to talk.”

“No we don’t.”

April glared at Raph, who didn’t even look up from his magazine. She waited. He continued to read. She tapped her foot. He licked his finger, turned a page, and pointed behind her.

“Door’s right there.”

“Raph-“

“ _UUUUUGH_.” Raph let his head flop back. “I don’t want to talk about this!”

“We _need_ to talk about this!”

“No! We don’t! We need to do what we’ve _been_ doing, which is pretend it never happened!”

April shut the door behind her.

“Great, now do that again but from the other side.”

“This is serious.”

“Seriously unnecessary!”

“Raph!”

“You wanna talk? Why don’t we talk about how you were so desperate to confess to Donnie, but now that you can actually tell which of us is which, you haven’t said a word to him?”

April blinked, caught off guard by this.

“Well…how do you know I haven’t?” she asked, folding her arms. It was a stupid thing to say, and Raph let out a sharp bark of laughter. “Look, that’s not important-“

“Oh but you accidentally making out with me is?” Raph froze. A look of horror passed over his face. “Oh god, you didn’t fall in love with me, did you?”

“ _What?_ No! Why would one _accidental_ kiss make me fall in love with you?”

“I don’t know!” Raph threw up his hands. “Is there another good reason why you haven’t told Donnie yet?”

April wrung her hands and stared at her feet. He had a point. When she was dying, it had all been so clear. All of her confusion and uncertainty over her feelings had vanished. She knew what she needed to do.

Now it just seemed…embarrassing. How would she even start? Should she just repeat what she said to Raph, but at the right turtle this time? She’d been ready to pour her heart out and now she’d never be able to tell Donnie without having to think about the time she got it wrong.

“I…I guess it’s just-“

“Nope. Nope. Gonna stop you right there.”

“Wh-“

“Shhhhh.” Raph held up a finger. “I don’t care. I don’t want to hear it. I’m not Dear Abby. I don’t do relationship advice and I don’t do the feelings talk.”

She glared at him.

“…wait, how do you know who Dear Abby is?”

 “Get out of my room.”

 

 “You did _what_?” Karai stared at her for a solid ten seconds, then doubled over laughing.

“Okay, yes, it’s funny- “

Karai put her head down on the table and howled. April squirmed in her seat. She and Karai were seated at April’s kitchen table, steaming mugs of tea now ignored beside them. It had taken them a few years, but she and Karai had become good friends. The kind of friends who could talk about their uniquely messed up lives without fear of judgement.

Well. Not too much judgement.

Usually.    

“Wait, wait, what kind of kiss?”  

“What?”

“What kind of kiss, was it like a peck on the lips or-“

April felt her ears go red and cursed her pale Irish skin.

“You used _tongue!”_ Karai shrieked. “On _Raph!_ ”

April put her face on her arms.

“Why did I tell you this?” she groaned.

“I don’t know!” Karai said, still laughing. Her normally flawless eyeliner had gone smeary around the edges from tears of laughter. Or possibly joy.

“Are you done?” April asked. She was going to be bright red for the rest of the day.

“Not even close!” Regardless, Karai took a few deep breaths and brought it down, though she still had a huge shit-eating grin on her face. “What did Donnie say when you told him?”

April bit her lower lip.

“You haven’t told him?” Karai’s smile slipped somewhat. “Why not?”

“I don’t know! It just seems so stupid now. I mean, I did the big huge speech and- Okay, come on!”

Karai had started giggling.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she sputtered.

“No you aren’t.”

“God, I wish I’d been there, I would do _anything_ to have seen the look on your face-“ She dissolved into laughter again.

“Look I don’t know what to do!”

“Just tell him what happened!”

“What am I supposed to say, “hey Donnie, when I almost died I tried to kiss you and confess my love but it turned out it was actually your brother! By the way, I love you!”

“Maybe not using those words exactly,” Karai said. April sighed and scrubbed her hand over her face. “Or you could just go back to pining in secret. That’s worked for you so far.”

She returned April’s glare with an innocent smile.

“I mean, if you did tell Donnie how you feel, what would we have to talk about every Thursday night?”

“Why do I ever tell you things.”

 

 

April spotted Leo the same time he spotted her. His eyes went wide with terror and he ducked, hurrying off towards his room.

“Leo!”

“OhheyAprilnicetoseeyouI’dlovetostayandchatbutIhavealotoftrainingtodomaybelater-“

She grabbed him by the arm.

“Please, Leo, I have to talk to somebody.”

“Why don’t you talk to Donnie?” Leo asked. “He’s the one you- y’know, you, when, y’know.”

“I know that but I just don’t know if I should.”

“Are you worried he doesn’t feel the same way? Because trust me – he does. Since we were fifteen.”

“I-“

“And he has never, _ever_ shut up about it. He’s super into you, okay? So I guarantee, if you walk into his lab right now and say to him exactly what you said to-“

His mouth snapped shut. April raised an eyebrow. Leo made an uncomfortable noise.

“Oh,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“That…does kind of complicate things.”

“Yes.”

“Well…April I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m not exactly a relationship expert.”

“If he knew about…the mix up, do you think he’d…”

“What, stop loving you?”

April went pink.

“April I guarantee that nothing short of murdering one of us is going to make Donnie stop caring about you.” He looked thoughtful. “And it’d probably depend on which one of us it was.”

“It just seems like it’s all...ruined, somehow.”

“You could probably get away with Raph,” Leo muttered to himself.

“Leo!”

“Sorry! But I mean it. Donnie will understand. I’m sure he’ll be too happy to hear how you feel to even be upset about it. Besides, it was an accident. It’s not like you did it on purpose.”

“Right. Right. He’d understand.”

“Totally.”

“And like you said, it was an accident.”

“Yep.”

“Maybe someday we’ll look back on all this and laugh.”

“Sure.”

April twisted her hands together.

“Okay but what if he gets really upset? You remember what it was like when he thought Casey and I were dating. How is he going to react if he finds out I…did that.”

Leo looked agonized.

“April, I don’t know.”

“He’s your brother! How can you not know?”

“Look, we don’t talk about this sort of stuff! Ever! That’s like… not a thing we do! Feelings! And relationship stuff! The closest we get is making fun of each other about it!”

April let out a frustrated huff and pressed her fingers to her forehead.

“This is so ridiculous. You seriously can’t tell me-“

She was talking to an empty hallway. Leo was nowhere to be seen.

“Leo!”

No answer. April growled.

“ _Guys._ Ugh.”

 

 

“Heyy, Mikey, can I talk to you for a second?”

Mikey didn’t get up from his upside-down position on the couch or pause his game.

“Sup April. You wanna watch me totally cream this boss monster?”

“Uhhh, no. Actually I wanted to talk to you.”

“Uhuh. I’ve played this game like five hundred times and it’s so easy, so I figured if I play upside it’ll be like super hard mode!”

“Okay well I don’t know if you noticed that things have been kind of…weird between me and Raph lately?”

“No.”

April pressed her lips together and gave him a look. It went entirely unnoticed.

“Okay, well, they have been, and I was…” What? Going to ask _Mikey_ for relationship advice?

_Get it together, O’Neil._

She’d gotten the same answer from three out of the three people she’d asked, and she was going to keep getting the answer until she sucked it up and did what she needed to do. Interrogating Donnie’s entire family was just going to lead to more embarrassment.

Oh god, what if she’d tried to talk to _Splinter_ about it?

“You know what, nevermind. Forget it.”

“Noooo problemo.”

 

 

April took a deep breath and slipped inside Donnie’s lab.

“Hey Donnie,” she called softly, not wanting to startle him. Donnie’s head popped up from behind his computer, and he beamed at her. Her heart skipped a beat. It always did when he smiled at her like that, like she was the most amazing thing that he’d ever seen, like nothing in the world mattered to him but her. That smile made her feel like she could do anything.

Even confess.   

“Hi April!”

“Um…there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

She slid the door shut behind her.

“Sure thing. Is everything okay?”

She looked into those big brown eyes and felt totally lost. Sometimes she looked at him and didn’t believe what she was seeing. A giant, supersmart, talking turtle that she was in love with. Sometimes it didn’t seem possible that life could really be _that_ weird.

“I kissed Raph,” she blurted. Donnie’s face fell.

“What?”

“And I don’t mean like a quick kiss either, I mean full on French kissed, tongue and everything! Then I told him I love him and that I’d loved him for a really long time.”

Donnie looked like he might throw up.

“You wanna know why?”

“Be…because you love him?”

“Because I thought he was _you_.” She stared at his face, trying to pick up some hint of what he was thinking. He looked like he’d been hit by a truck and didn’t really know what to do about it. This probably hadn’t been the best way to break the news. Maybe she should have opened with “I love you” and left the “I kissed your brother” thing for later. Or never.

“The whole time I was in that tank, I kept thinking about all the things I wish I’d done in my life, and the big one was telling you how I feel. Then when Raph pulled me out of the water, I didn’t really think or look, I just…” she sighed. “You’ve always been there when I needed you most. I just assumed it was you again, and I wanted to do it before I lost my nerve.”

She glanced at Donnie. He was silent, staring, open-mouthed.

“I love you, Donatello.”

Donnie didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He didn’t breathe.

“Please say something,” she said, hating how desperate she sounded. “Donnie?”

He made a quiet, strangled noise.

“Donnie!”  

“AHHHILOVEYOUTOO!” He yelped, then clapped his hands over his mouth. “I. I love. You too.”

April smiled up at him, and he smiled back. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down.

He didn’t taste like wood polish or engine oil or chemicals, and there was only a hint of coffee, but it felt right in a way that the kiss with Raph hadn’t, even when she thought he was Donnie.

“You kissed _Raph_?”

“Shut up. Kiss. Don’t talk.”

“Yes ma’am.”

 


End file.
